nos erant diversus
by Fiercest
Summary: A what-if of the metaphorical variety. A different take on the non-massacre AU.


**A/n: This will be separated into two parts. Partly because it will have greater effect (pshyeaaah sure) but mostly because I feel guilty that it's taking so long XD**

**The beginning has arrived!**

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLI! NO WORRIES! I SHALL BE OLD SOON TOO! :D**

**Summary****: A what-if of the metaphorical variety. If Sasuke had been in Sakura's place, would he have gone after her? Sacrificed what she had? And what about her? **

**Inspired by a debate with a friend and a conversation with another.**

nos erant diversus  
_.  
We were different_

Chapter 1:  
_In Which There is Little Understanding_

…

The 'what _if_'s and **maybe**s in the world  
are the things that  
_could_ have, should have, **might** have, maybe  
_**BEEN**_

X

x

X

Sea legs are a good metaphor. She hasn't quite gotten her sea legs yet. Sakura is in unfamiliar territory with uncertain companions like self-doubt, suspicion and fury to accompany her on her journey. She is fumbling and tripping her way through a long dreaded encounter and doing a spectacular job at failing.

Fantastic, really. She has always been good at the whole _not succeeding_ bit.

She looks at the cream, neatly pressed sheets that rise over the mountain range of a human form's geography and fall over the sides of a bed where countless nameless, faceless, less extraordinary people had lain. People who didn't make her heart pound so hard that it felt as if her pulse beat in her temples and that with every pump she was becoming more and more functionally incapable of thought patterns. People who weren't so darn distracting.

She tries to hear the heart monitor over her own fluttering pulse. She tries to prioritize.

She tries to look at anyone but the occupant of the bed who seems to suffer from no such affliction.

Sasuke stares at her as if it's his god given right; as if he's done it every day, their whole lives.

"Stop it," she says with confidence she doesn't feel. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Hn, like what?" to be perfectly fair, he hadn't been staring at her in any sort of particular way, but she doesn't have to acknowledge this. Sakura has become good friends with denial and has learned to all but eliminate the symptoms. Her fists don't shake, she meets his eye with steady, inscrutable countenance and _her_ eyes are a one way mirror. She can see him, and she hopes to god that he can't see _her_.

"Just stop looking at me." _Okay? Are you happy now? You got your reaction, that was what you were looking for, wasn't it? Stop, just stop, please._

He nods, as if this is the reaction he expects and she had simply been the outcome of an experiment of his; where the hypothesis was held to be truth. Irrationally, she hates this, she hates him for his know-it-all tendencies and his smirk and his eyes that seem to be as inscrutable as hers. "You lost that right."

Sasuke does not defend his actions; he never has and never will feel like he has to. But he speaks up because she has impeached his honor with her implications and he only has so much left to impeach. "What would you have done in my place?" his voice is steady, evenly spaced and has no connotation; positive or negative. This is what she hates most of all; he steps back and turns this, _whatever this is, _into an analysis. She envies that he is cold; that he can see their entire situation as a part of the bigger picture instead of a part of them. She hates him for being able to step back and stop feeling when she can't. "You cannot blame me if you would have done the same."

"What if I wouldn't have done the same?" she counters petulantly, poking him harder than necessary with an IV. "What would you have done in mine?"

He frowns and gives no answer, but she can imagine.

It hurts to know he would never have given her a second thought. He would have gone on with his life, wouldn't he?

_Wouldn't he?_

…

…

The world spins _counter_clockwise  
and time moves back to a time when **simplicity** was _**underrated**_.

…

…

It is just another day, not unlike any other when Sasuke wakes up, eats and leaves his home. His mother pushes him off the bed in lieu of alarm, fusses over too small portions and he leaves alongside his father who is himself, off to the Police Station.

He goes to the academy and pretends that his future doesn't hinge on chance, on this one day that is completely out of his hands. Only his mother had wished him luck.

Sasuke decides that he is lucky, because calling it something else or something more would be messy and gray and Sasuke doesn't like either one of these things. He is mildly associated with the anarchy-taunting force of nature known as Naruto and he could have done relatively worse than a girl he's never heard speak. He has never had the patience for chatter; which begs the question. _Why _is he friends with Naruto? The answer is more complex than one would think and therefore he doesn't have the patience to explain it or define it either. Simply put; he isn't a fan of silence either.

His brother had been silent, an overbearing presence in his childhood memories, not because of how he had acted towards him, not because of any protective tendencies he remembers him having, but because of what he represents in his present. Itachi was a loose end in his life that he had never understood and probably never would.

He had watched his brother nearly slice their father in two, walk out the door and _still_ he has no idea how it came to that.

No one would answer him, no matter how many times he asked.

The girl assigned to his team, Sakura, is nothing like what he had come to expect. There were stories about her, told by the school children and overheard from hushed conversations between parents.

From what he can glean, Sakura has no family and it has been so for a long time. She doesn't seem to have any friends either, because during class she is quiet and attentive and during recess and lunch she simply disappears. He assumes that the loss was not so long ago that she doesn't remember, because it is the only explanation he can find for her reserved demeanor.

When their squad is announced, her lips quirk kindly at him and Naruto momentarily; as if they were no more than a polite afterthought.

He only notices something strange about her when they meet their teacher. Kakashi asks her what she wants to do when she's older.

She replies that she'd like to travel.

"Anywhere specific?"

Her smile is sad and she snorts, as if sharing a private joke with herself. "It all depends."

It is then that Sasuke suspects that if it is a joke, it is a very sick one.

Kakashi doesn't ask anything else.

X x X

Their first mission outside the village walls is an escort mission. It is then that he sees what his strange teammate can really do.

There is an attack and the rush of battle is nothing and everything like he imagined it would be. He is more scared and excited than he's ever been his entire life and he thinks of his brother and _his _teammates and how not one of them had been able to find the words to describe it when he'd asked. Sakura is, of course, immediately assigned to protect their client.

A milestone is made when knives of lethal intent aim for their client and Sakura, without a second thought leaps to stop it.

He doesn't doubt that she can do it, but his legs move without permission; his subconscious registers her as someone to protect. And so, he acts.

His body is the barrier that deflects weapons and his back is the recipient of a glare so ferocious that he doesn't need to turn around to see it to feel it. Tentatively he glances over his shoulder at her, like a child testing the waters after he's colored all over the walls with crayon.

Sakura's glare transforms into a wide eyed, open mouthed expression of fear. Her reflexes are faster than his. She kicks his legs out from under him and a knife _just _clips his right ear.

He doesn't really know what to say to her for days afterwards but settles for thank you.

"I could have handled him myself in the first place," is her sharp reply. It seems petulant and childish and it is the most human thing he's heard from her. It makes him smile in that infuriating, condescending way that he knows Naruto hates.

She rolls her eyes in a self-righteous, exasperated fashion and proceeds to ignore him for the rest of the trip.

Sasuke is fine with this because Naruto takes this as an opportunity to babble shamelessly and ceaselessly at someone other than him.

To his shock, this incites _reaction, _something completely unexpected.

Eventually, Sakura Haruno snaps and punched the blond in the head.

"Sakura-chan!" the boy whines.

Behind them, Kakashi snorts.

x X x

It is a Sunday evening when Sasuke is stricken with sudden irrational panic. Something is very different, very wrong.

He has never adjusted well to change and so, the shift in the status quo is quite unwelcome.

Team 7 is a unit. They are the interlaced metal rings that magicians use to amuse crowds of gawkers, intersected and seemingly inseparable. Each of them has a certain amount of baggage and none of them speaks of it, ever. Whether it is because the support given is enough, they already know or maybe just don't want to. It's how they work; this unending understanding that ties them together inexplicably.

To have something shift, to have the way they look at each other change, is unimaginable. And it is happened.

It makes Sasuke terribly uncomfortable.

It seems that Sakura Haruno- whose demeanor was a few degrees short of icy, whose quiet tranquility was broken loudly and on a regular basis, who is inapproachable and most of the time irrational –is looking at him out of the corner of her eye from underneath long dark lashes (dark lashes that, yesterday, had been the same shade as her hair). Her lips are pouted and parted slightly, a shade more red than they should be and her cheeks are dusted pink. The color of her pallor only darkens when she realizes that he has noticed her staring.

She immediately stiffens and turns back to her ramen.

Sasuke knows that look though, it is unmistakable.

If he were anyone more verbally inclined he would have groaned in despair. Sakura had a crush on him.

Later, because he had no one else to speak to on such matters besides Naruto (who would exclaim the new information loudly enough so that people even across town would hear), he asks Kakashi about it.

He doesn't see what the older man finds so amusing about it though.

x X x

He has his doubts when the chunin exams come around and they're volunteered to participate. He isn't quite ready yet to place his life in Naruto's hands. That is to say; he won't on a voluntary basis. He feels more guilty about his lack of trust in the boy because in his case it's unwarranted. Naruto is his equal, although he'll never say that to his face.

In Sakura's case though, it is pity that he feels more than guilt.

She tries so hard. They all see it; she's first to arrive every morning, she's last to leave. She asks endless questions and executes every move with careful precision and a willingness to do it differently, to improve her method with each strike.

In theory, she should be stronger than the rest of them. But she's missing something essential, for all the brain and pandering she does, for every ounce of control she obtains, she lacks what is fundamental. Sakura Haruno isn't talented. Not like him and Naruto. She is weak and she is beating against a wall with no give.

Sasuke realizes this; he pities her for these very reasons.

He doesn't love her, doesn't even like her, but he gets it. Maybe.

So he'll protect her until she's strong enough to do it herself, he's not sure she'll ever be but that's fine he thinks. After all, how hard it could be? Especially with Naruto and Kakashi's help.

Oh how wrong he was.

x X x


End file.
